The United States expects to “celebrate independence” from COVID-19 by Independence Day (July 4), when vaccines will have been made available to all adults. But for many developing countries and emerg ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-26
The United States and the world entered recession a year ago. Normally, economists can’t predict the onset of a downturn. But because this recession stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic, they could reli ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-26
The OECD is projecting an uneven K-shaped economic recovery from the pandemic in 2021. Richer countries with more extensive vaccine rollouts that can afford to reopen and reflate their economies will ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-25
Humanity’s consumption of fresh water has long exceeded the rate of replenishment. Now, researchers are warning that this essential natural resource is running out. If we are to reverse this trend, in ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-24
Central banks’ unconventional policies undoubtedly rescued financial markets in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its height. But those actions now leave central banks joined at the hip with cred ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-23
Last November, something happened in the middle of the South Atlantic that was unusual enough to make a local northern rockhopper penguin raise one of its long spiky yellow eyebrows. The tiny archipel ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-19
Thanks to the rapid deployment of vaccines, COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States are declining, and pandemic restrictions on economic activity are being eased. But ev ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-18
In January, the Netherlands hosted a digital Climate Adaptation Summit where representatives of governments from around the world discussed their post-pandemic recovery plans. To take advantage of rem ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-17
Strange as it may sound, vaccines are now the key to reviving the transatlantic relationship. Former President Donald Trump’s “America First” administration had left ties between the United States and ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-16
By now, most countries in Asia and the Pacific have proposed some sort of post-pandemic recovery package. Many include investments in sustainability, which the United Nations has repeatedly urged gove ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-12
In the weeks prior to US President Joe Biden’s inauguration, many believed that a heavy domestic agenda would leave him with little scope to break quickly and cleanly with Donald Trump’s purely transa ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-11
The idea of a digital dollar has been in the air for some time now. Recently, it descended from the ether to the lips of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. At an ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-11
President Joe Biden’s announcement that the US will have enough COVID-19 vaccines for every American by the end of May has contributed to a rising tide of optimism about the country’s economic prospec ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-10
I was recently approached about setting up my own “special purpose acquisition company” (SPAC), which would allow me to secure financial commitments from investors on the expectation that I will event ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-09
It is easy to forget that for a long time – long before Google and Facebook went head-to-head with the Australian government last month – there wasn’t a proven business model for the internet. That, a ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-08
Back in 1992, Lawrence H. Summers, then the chief economist at the World Bank, and I warned that pushing the US Federal Reserve’s annual inflation target down from 4% to 2% risked causing big problems ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-05
One month ago, in Myanmar, protesters against the military coup gathered around the United States embassy in Yangon. They called on President Joe Biden to make the generals go back to their barracks a ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-05
When China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, recently called for a reset of bilateral relations with the United States, a White House spokesperson replied that the US saw the relationship as one of strong ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-04
The US economy’s K-shaped recovery is underway. Those with stable full-time jobs, benefits, and a financial cushion are faring well as stock markets climb to new highs. Those who are unemployed or par ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-03
In “The Great Realisation,” a compelling four-minute video, the poet Tomos Roberts (aka Tom Foolery) suggests a potential silver lining to the COVID-19 cataclysm. By forcing us to slow down, literally ...More
EJ Insight2021-03-02